The owner of Brisbane gentleman’s club BConfidentialreceived a death threat and furious complaints after a billboard was erected advertising the club. The sign read: ‘Tell your wife you’ll be late’.

Now on one of Brisbane's busiest roads.

According to the news reports one woman phoned in and said the owner should be put in a house with no doors and no windows and burnt to death, while a mother emailed the club’s manager stating “That I will not rest until this hideous message to decent society is removed by the powers that be. Hopefully your business and the sleazebag that created this campaign will not ever be able to publicly advertise your services again“.

The Advertising Standard Bureau dismissed all complaints (less than 20) and as a result the owners of BConfidential erected the same billboard on one of Brisbane’s busiest roads.

IS THAT FUNNY, COTTON ON? IS IT? IS IT FUNNY TO JOKE ABOUT BABIES BEING ABUSED????

[…]

Internet, I am outraged, disgusted and distressed. I am a customer of Cotton On Kids. A long-time, loyal customer who buys a STACK of clothes there for my kids and who willingly endorses their products FOR FREE whenever I am interviewed by the media and asked where I buy my kids clothes.

Anna Bligh is no stranger to this blog and her team made an appearance or two again this year (possibly for the most absurd reason yet). The QLD Government banned skateboarding, scooter riding and rollerblading at night to protect… well no one is sure who, it just had to be done. Transport Minister Rachel Nolan said she wasn’t anti-fun and ‘this is just as much about common courtesy as it is about common sense.’ She was unable to provide evidence it was needed and offenders are now slapped with a $40 fine.

13. Liberal MP wants ancient drinking board game banned.

Pass Out the board game

Liberal MP Steve Irons demanded a board game that he said encouraged alcohol abuse be banned from sale in Australia. The game in question, Pass-out, has players travel around the game board taking drinks and reciting tongue twisters and has been around in board game form since at least 1962. According to Refused-Classification.com, the game was called in by the Director of the Classification Board and was rated Category 1 on April 15th 2009.

The Australian Government refused to make a visa exemption for six artists from North Korea to visit Brisbane and speak about their art at the Queensland Art Gallery. The Department of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying the studio where the artists work ‘reportedly produces almost all of the official artworks in North Korea, including works that clearly constitute propaganda.’ The art was still shown and the artists were allowed to speak in other countries where their work was exhibited.

Girls Who Like Girls, Girls in Need and a bonus DVD attached to a Hustler magazine were just a small portion of the adult films banned in 2009. An adult film can be banned in Australia if it contains fetishes, even one as common as spanking.

‘However the issue of children accessing inappropriate material is a very real one and we all have systems in place whereby we would stop a child from taking something that was inappropriate, but at the same time we think that there is a very important role for parents to play’ she said.

Richards said it was unlikely that all of the libraries holding Mr Kevin’s novels will pull them from the shelves, but both books were later banned by the Classification Board following an application from the Department of Justice and the Attorney General.

The Kylie and Jackie O Show was suspended after airing a segment in which a 14-year-old girl was strapped to a lie detector and questioned by her mother, Sandilands and Jackie O about her past experiences with sex and drugs — A recipe for disaster with the child admitting she was raped at the age of 12. There was a national outcry and legitimate concerns about the treatment (or exploitation) of children for entertainment were raised. However, many of the attacks focused more on silencing Sandilands and campaigning to remove him from the airwaves.

4. Abby Winters raided, cleared, charged.

The popular Australian-operated adult website Abby Winters was raided by police in June 2009 after The Herald Sun provided police with ‘a dossier of information’ about the allegedly illegal porn the site had ‘churned out in Melbourne since about 2000′.

The site’s CEO Garion Hall issued Somebody Think Of The Children with a statement confirming no charges were laid.

Confiscated DVD titles were submitted to the classification board by Victoria Police for review and all were classified X18+. None were Refused Classification.

However, in December 2009 Hall was charged with 54 counts of making objectionable films (see What is an objectionable film in Victoria) for gain and possessing a commercial quantity of objectionable films. The Herald Sun also reports he has been charged with child pornography offences after police ‘seized footage of allegedly illegal sex acts’.

Hall commented on the Abby Winters forum that as the matter is before the courts he is unable to comment other than it’s business as usual.

3. Censors Vs MUFF.

The Australia Classification Board refused to give the Melbourne Underground Film Festival an exemption to screen Jennifer Bell’s short film Matinee. MUFF organisers were outraged that Australia’s censors had sought fit to ban ‘Matinée’ for the sole reason that it depicts actual sex despite being ‘set within a relationship based on love and mutual desire’.

The film’s director also wrote a letter to the ACB, stating:

‘The sexual relationship portrayed by the characters Mariah and Daniel in Matinée is not only a consensual, emotional and nuanced relationship, but their sex plays an important role in the story of the film’.

The saga began in 2008 when Illingworth’s home was raided by police after he uploaded a video of what is believed to be a training film for a Russian circus family. He was charged with accessing and uploading child-abuse material and faced a maximum of 20 years jail. The Australian Classification Board later classified the video as MA15+ (suitable for those over the age of fifteen and the same rating as the Jim Carrey comedy Me, Myself and Irene) and the charges were dropped shortly after. The decision highlighted that the Queensland Police’s relentless pursuit of Illingworth was completely unwarranted.